Caroline Bettinger-López’s research, activism, and teaching focus on international human rights law and advocacy, including the implementation of human rights norms at the domestic level. Her main regional focus is the United States and Latin America, and her principal areas of interest include violence against women, gender and race discrimination, and immigrants’ rights. Bettinger-López regularly litigates and engages in other forms of advocacy in the Inter-American Human Rights system, federal and state courts and legislative bodies, and the United Nations. She teaches in the Human Rights Clinic, in which she previously participated as a J.D. student in 2001-2002. She helps to coordinate the Human Rights in the U.S. Project and Bringing Human Rights Home Lawyers’ Network, a network of over 100 public interest lawyers who are actively involved in domestic human rights strategies. Bettinger-López also consults with U.S. NGOs on mechanisms for incorporating human rights into domestic advocacy, and coordinates conferences, trainings, and workshops on human rights.
Prior to joining Columbia, Bettinger-López worked as a Skadden Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, Women’s Rights Project, where she focused on employment and housing discrimination against domestic violence victims and low-wage immigrant women workers. At the ACLU, she filed a landmark case against the United States before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of Jessica Gonzales, a domestic violence victim whose three children were killed after police in Colorado failed to enforce a restraining order against her estranged husband, and whose constitutional claims against the police were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005. Bettinger-López, the Human Rights Clinic, and the ACLU currently represent Gonzales in Jessica Gonzales v. United States. Prior to her Skadden Fellowship, Bettinger-López clerked for Judge Sterling Johnson, Jr. in the Eastern District of New York.
Bettinger-López holds a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. She is a member of the International Human Rights Committee of the New York City Bar Association and the author of "Human Rights at Home: Domestic Violence as a Human Rights Violation" (Columbia Human Rights Law Review, December 2, 2008); “International Union, U.A.W. v. Johnson Controls: The History of Litigation Alliances and Mobilization to Challenge Fetal Protection Policies,” in Civil Rights Stories (Foundation Press, 2007) (with Susan Sturm); “Jessica Gonzales v. United States: An Emerging Model for Domestic Violence and Human Rights Advocacy in the United States,” (Harvard Human Rights Law Journal, Vol.21 Spring 2008); and Cuban-Jewish Journeys: Searching for Identity, Home, and History in Miami (Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2000). Her recent op-eds include “Protection from Domestic Violence: Time To Set a New Standard” (Nat’l Law Journal, Oct. 22, 2007) and “The Dominican Republic: Grant Full Citizenship to All Born in the Country” (The Miami Herald, June 9, 2007) (with Indira Goris).
